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Bi-Amping questions

Please excuse any indication of stupidity on my part in terms of the following question:

My current system is comprised of an Arcam CD player, a 60 watt Adcom amp, an NAD preamp and Linn Keilidh speakers which are bi-wired with Linn bi-wire cables. My interconnects are Audioquest Ruby.

I am very, very happy with this system and am not in a financial situation where I can do a big upgrade. However, I'd like more power as the system can sound a bit stretched at higher volumes.

Would it be better to add another Adcom amp (they are available used for great prices) and bi-wire or look into a more powerful single two-channel amp and forget about bi-amping?

If bi-amping is a good route, could someone explain how that would work? I'm interested in the concept.

THANKS in advance-

Brent
brentaric

Showing 1 response by eldartford

eldartford
4,262 posts
 
With "passive" biamping each amp must swing the peak-to-peak voltage of the full range signal, so, as Almarg says, no significant power increase will be realized.

On the other hand, when you use an electronic crossover (real biamping) at a given total signal level, the peak-to-peak voltage swing of each amp is reduced. The high frequency signal does not ride on the Low, and vice versa.
Some increase in total power will be realized.

However, the greatest benefit of real biamping is the reduction of IM distortion. This was more important years ago when amps commonly exhibited more than 1 percent IM distortion.
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